Darkly Captivating: A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee

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The cover of A lesson in vengeance. The white text of the title interweaves purple flowers, vines, and cobwebs.

Retreieved from VictoriaLeewrites.com. Cover art by Maggie Enterrios.

In A Lesson In Vengeance, Victoria Lee whisks readers away to the unattainable land of private boarding schools for the wealthy. Well, unattainable for the majority of readers, anyways. 

But Dalloway School, where A Lesson in Vengeance takes place, is no ordinary boarding school. The famous girls’ school is also the location of a series of deaths over 200 years ago. The Dalloway Five, as they came to be known, were students rumoured to be witches. Whose dabbling with the arcane got them killed. Some even say they haunt the school itself to this very day. 

Enter Felicity Morrow. She’d been obsessively researching the Dalloway Five for her senior year thesis until her long-time girlfriend, Alex, died unexpectedly. After more than a year away, she’s finally back, ready to continue her studies. But the occult calls to her, and the ghost of Alex hides behind every corner. 

Felicity’s new roommate, Ellis Haley, doesn’t help matters. Brand new to Dalloway, she’s already a successful novelist, and her latest book tackles the Dalloway Five. Felicity finds herself wrapped up in Ellis’ research. However, she can’t shake the pull towards Ellis and magic, nor can she get rid of the feeling that getting involved with either spells her doom.

My Thoughts

Wherever you think this book is going, you’re wrong. An immaculate thriller, it will consume your thoughts while you’re not reading it, and it will linger in your mind for long after you’ve finished. 

The two main characters are one of the book’s major strengths – both are layered and interesting. Felicity herself, I found to be a very compelling, if unreliable, narrator. Despite being the daughter of a wealthy socialite, many readers will empathize with Felicity’s struggles with grief, mental illness and her own queerness. Ellis is eccentric and intriguing. Much like Felicity, I found myself drawn to her, wanting to know more. 

I wish some of the other side characters – namely Leonie, Quinn, and Kajal – got more attention and scenes. Leonie and Kajal are some of the only non-white characters, and I would’ve liked to learn a little more about their experiences. Like what drew them to apply for Godwin house – the ultra-exclusive residence at Dalloway where the characters live during the school year. Quinn, Ellis’ nonbinary older sibling, was just a ton of fun when they were finally “on-screen.” I would have loved to read more about them. 

On another note, this book has some amazing prose. Lee is richly descriptive and creative with her imagery. Lines like “I feel like she creates and unravels me in the same moment, a sentence she writes and erases and rewrites, a product of her want and imagination. I feel like she invented me,” are plentiful. This dramatic, romantic flair won’t be for everyone. Still, in my opinion, it heightens the gothic atmosphere of a centuries-old finishing school. 

A Lesson in Vengeance sits at the crossroads of ambition, privilege, grief and trauma. Its exploration of mental illness could be considered meta, as Felicity herself describes her thesis as an exploration of “…how depictions of mental illness are used to build suspense by introducing uncertainty and a sense of mistrust, especially with regard to the narrator’s perception of events, and the conflation of magic and madness in female characters.”

 I thoroughly enjoyed reading A Lesson in Vengeance, and I recommend it to anyone looking for an appropriately autumn-themed book to close out the season with.  You won’t regret it.

Corrin Lewis

Corrin first picked up a book when she was three years old and hasn’t stopped reading since. She’s a 2nd-year student in Algonquin College’s Professional Writing program and hopes to publish a novel of her own one day. Her favourite way to waste time is by playing video games.

Author Interview: Danni Maxwell

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Danni’s Author PHoto.

Writing as a medium and a profession has changed drastically over the years. Long gone are the days of sitting at a typewriter and mailing your manuscript to brick-and-mortar publishers. Now, we read primarily online, and authors have a million options at their disposal for publishing and marketing their books. 

Danni Maxwell is one of those new-age authors. Originally from Kingston, Ontario, Danni writes Queer New-Adult fiction and is currently celebrating the release of her new short story collection. She's active in the writer community on Tiktok, where she has 1500 followers.

I had the chance to sit down with Danni to discuss her writing recently. Here are some of the best moments of that conversation. 

As cliché as it is, I'd love to know what made you initially start writing. 

As cliche as it sounds, I really have been writing for as long as I can remember. Telling stories became my creative outlet from a young age, but I think my earliest memory of writing any of them down was when I was 7. It took off from there, and I wrote all through elementary school just for me. The stories were books I wanted to read that I couldn't find when I looked for new books. I also dabbled in fanfiction writing for almost 5 years before shifting back to original content. I never really took it seriously until my creative writing class in high school, though.

You've published three books in four years, which is quite an achievement! How do you start your book writing process? 

Thank you! I think it definitely depends on each individual book I write. I can draw inspiration from anything. Usually, that's a good thing, but sometimes it can get really distracting. A single photo, a sound. A scenic view through a car window. One tiny thing could incite an idea for me, be it a character, a plot point that I write around, etc. It will get stuck in an infinite loop in my mind until I write it down. Characters will come to me, scenes will play out, and it becomes the bare bones of a plot that starts the entire process of writing the book. I am not really a plotter by nature; I plan little things and let the rest come to me as I go along. That is a whole other problem in itself!

LIfe In COlour’s Cover, retrieved from Ninestarpress.com

Your new anthology, Life In Colour, came out Oct.4th of this year; care to tell the readers a little more about it? 

Sure! It's a short story collection with a diverse cast of characters and their journeys to happily ever after. In A World in Blue, you follow Oliver and Blue. Even though Oliver writes about happily ever afters, he doesn't believe in them. Blue is his #1 fan (but he doesn't know Oliver is his favourite author because he writes under a pen name). He knows Oliver's opinion on love and happily ever afters, but Blue is determined to show Oliver that they do exist. When Skies Are Grey is a companion sequel about Oliver's best friend Eli, who thinks he's notorious for ruining everything he touches, especially relationships. But then he meets Grey, the person his best friends swear will be the one to show him how to grow and learn how to love again.  The Rainbow Connection is the perfect epilogue to everyone's story.

Finally, If you could go on a writer's retreat to anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I think I would go somewhere to Europe. Paris and Italy are known for writer's retreats, and I couldn't think of anything better than writing from a little Parisian patisserie or surrounded by gorgeous Italian architecture. How could that not foster my imagination?

 

 Danni’s newest book, Life in Colour is out now and available on Amazon.ca or directly through the publisher at Ninestarpress.com. 

Corrin Lewis

Corrin first picked up a book when she was three years old and hasn’t stopped reading since. She’s a 2nd-year student in Algonquin College’s Professional Writing program and hopes to publish a novel of her own one day. Her favourite way to waste time is by playing video games.